New Delhi: If the
entire opposition gangs up, the ruling United Progressive Alliance
(UPA) will find it difficult in July to elect a new president of
its choice to succeed Pratibha Patil who completes her five-year
term.

With a badly fractured polity, the Congress will need every vote
it can muster to push its nominee, or one it is comfortable with,
into Rashtrapati Bhavan.

And this will be no easy task -- thanks to the numbers game.

The electoral college for presidential election consists of MPs
and members of assemblies in 30 states and union territories. A
pre-determined value is attached to each vote, based on the
population determined by the 1971 census.

The Congress-led UPA has a thin majority in the Lok Sabha but its
numbers are well below the half-way mark in the Rajya Sabha.

Across the country, both UPA and its foes rule major states which
command higher value of votes due to their population and number
of legislators.

Party sources said calculations showed that the cumulative
strength of all non-UPA parties put together was slightly more
than that of UPA. They said that if the entire opposition puts up
a common candidate in the presidential battle, the UPA nominee was
bound to face an uphill task.

Congress leaders said the forthcoming assembly polls were crucial
to its prospects as the total value of votes of legislators across
the five states (Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Manipur, Goa and
Uttarakhand) was almost a tenth of the total value of electors for
presidential polls.

Pratibha Patil's term ends in July and that of Vice President
Hamid Ansari in August this year. The Election Commission can
issue the notification for the presidential elections anytime
after May 25.

The total value of votes of legislators in the 2007 presidential
election was 549,474 and that of MPs 549,408. The total value thus
was 1,098,882.

This is the reason, the sources say, the Congress knows that it
would need the backing of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), Samajwadi
Party and Trinamool Congress to get a president of its choice.

How tricky this could be was proved in 2007 when the Congress had
to give up on Karan Singh as its presidential candidate, because
the Left, on which it was then dependent, would not agree to back
him.

The Uttar Pradesh assembly has the largest value of votes among
all states (83,824).

Election Commission officials said the total strength of the
electoral college in 2007 was 4,896 (4,120 legislators and 776
MPs). The formula will remain the same for the 2012 presidential
contest.

Even as the Election Commission has begun preparatory work for the
presidential elections, the Congress and the BJP officially say
that they have yet to give serious consideration to who should
succeed Patil as the republic's 13th president.

"It is too early," Congress spokesperson Raashid Alvi told IANS.
The BJP's Ram Nath Kovind said a clear picture would emerge only
after the results come from the five states March 6.

Muslim groups
have filed six complaints in courts in Jaipur and Ajmer against
four authors -- Hari Kunzru, Amitava Kumar, Ruchir Joshi and Jeet
Thayil -- for reading out excerpts from "The Satanic Verses" by
Salman Rushdie and discussing the book at the Jaipur Literature
Festival Jan 20. »

Cognitive scientist Steven Pinker, known for his radical theories
about the evolution of language and violence in society, has a
good word for India: the country is on the right side of the
global homicide and crime scale »

Agni-IV, India's latest nuclear-capable strategic missile, will be
showcased to the public for the first time as part of the static
display atop a tableau that its developer, the Defence Research
and »

Picture of the Day

Dr Shariq Nisar, Director of Research and Operations of
India’s premier shariah advisory firm TASIS and one of the
senior most professionals of Islamic Finance in India, was
in Malegaon on Sunday to address a seminar on "Prospects of
Islamic Finance in India".

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